Gaafar al-Nimeiry

Gaafar al-Nimeiry, who died on May 30 aged 79, survived as ruler of Sudan for
16 years – a considerable tribute to his ability to trim his sails according
to the vagaries of the political weather.

11:00AM BST 02 Jun 2009

The largest country on the African continent, Sudan had long been riven by ethnic and religious conflicts when Nimeiry assumed power in a coup in 1969. During the next decade and a half, opportunism and obligation saw him embrace apparently contradictory roles: as a socialist he purged communists; as a vital western ally and backer of peace with Israel he worked with militant Islamists to introduce Sharia law.

The last of these measures reignited the civil war between the Arab Muslim north and the black Christian and animist south, which he had brought to an end more than a decade earlier. In the end, though, it was his failure to fix Sudan's economic difficulties that led to his downfall.

Gaafar Muhammad al-Nimeiry, whose father was variously described as a postman or a policeman, was born on January 1 1930 in Omdurman, in what was then the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Although his scholastic promise was negligible, he gained entry to the Hantoub secondary school in Wad Medani – an English-style boarding establishment for the sons of the elite.

There Gaafar became an ardent nationalist, and in 1949 he was accepted by the Military College in Khartoum, from which he graduated in 1952 as a second lieutenant.

As he embarked on his military career, his hero was Egypt's President Nasser, and in 1957 Nimeiry was one of a group of officers who formed the nationalist Free Officers' Organisation which – after the Sudanese parliament had declared unilateral independence in 1956 – was accused of trying to orchestrate a military coup. Nimeiry was arrested, dismissed from the army and placed under house arrest.

In 1958 next year there was a successful military coup and Nimeiry was readmitted to the army. After being posted to the Southern Command at Juba he reactivated the FOO and began to work against the government of General Ibrahim Abboud. In 1964, after the FOO had refused to fire on anti-government demonstrators, Abboud resigned, to be replaced by a civilian administration.

For the next four years Sudan was in a state of incipient chaos. On May 25 1969, by which time he had attained the rank of colonel, Nimeiry and his fellow officers in the FOO arrested 63 politicians and all the army generals in a bloodless coup. Nimeiry became president of the Revolutionary Command Council, took the rank of major-general and assumed the posts of defence secretary and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Political parties were banned, the nation became the Democratic Republic of Sudan and Nimeiry declared himself prime minister.

From the start, however, he struggled to balance the demands of country's political and sectarian factions. In 1971, after he announced that he would "crush" communism in Sudan, left-wing army officers stormed his palace and took him prisoner. He survived thanks to the army, most of which remained loyal. After 72 hours in captivity, Nimeiry was liberated, the coup leaders were executed, and at a poll in September 1971 he was elected Sudan's first president, with 98 per cent of the vote.

Six months later, in what was hailed as a feat of some statesmanship, Nimeiry signed an agreement which ended the long-running civil war in the south. Under the accord, the three southern provinces were granted regional autonomy and assurances that Islam would not become Sudan's state religion. Relations with America began to thaw, and in 1976 the United States resumed aid. Two years later Nimeiry was the only Arab leader to support the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat after he signed the Camp David accords with Israel.

If the West looked favourably on Nimeiry, however, his determined suppression of political opposition continued to make enemies at home, and there were at least four attempts to unseat him in the late 1970s. Nimeiry survived them all, however, and in 1977 was re-elected to the presidency. Parliamentary elections in February 1978 saw the opposition gaining ground, and he responded by locking up many of his detractors and, in 1982, purging the military. The following year he imposed Sharia law across Sudan, leading to a resumption of the civil war in the south.

None of these measures, however, had any effect on rising food and fuel prices, the influx of refugees from conflicts in neighbouring Ethiopia and Uganda, and towering foreign debt. During an official visit to America in April 1985, Nimeiry was deposed.

He lived in exile in Egypt until 1999, when he was invited back to Sudan by President Omar al-Bashir, who had come power a decade earlier with the support of Islamist hardliners.

Although some believed that Nimeiry retained political ambitions, he no longer commanded popular support, and he exerted little influence in the last 10 years of his life.

Gaafar al-Nimeiry is survived by his wife. Despite the political tightrope which he chose to tread, he observed optimistically in 1976: "When my day comes, it need not be by a shot or a knife. Allah will decide."